Play It Again Sam: the World-Weary Traveller by John Borthwick

Sometimes you meet a person who reminds you of what’s at the true heart of travel.

There may be many good reasons to not travel. Taoist sage Lao Tzu, for instance, deep-sixed the whole urge travel with a simple, four-line epitaph:

Without looking out the window
one can see the way of heaven.
The further one goes
the less one knows.

And yet we do ramble obsessively to the ends of the earth and its rainbows. Why? Our answers rarely come close to explaining the nomadic itch in our travelling bones. However, travel writers can answer the question “Why travel?” quite simply, if not glibly. Because it is our job. Up in the morning and off to roam — if not Nome, Nairobi or Wagga Wagga. Not surprisingly, after years of this, many travelling scribes become world-weary. But they ramble diligently on, taking photos, jotting quotes, anecdotes and theme park prices while trying to retain at least one small, un-jaded corner in their souls.

Those writers, such as the venerable Jan Morris, who continue to make the world sound like an enchanted place can do so because of a singular quality: this world still enchants them. The rest of us plug politely on, sometimes recalling wistfully those early journeys of youthful folly where momentum itself was the Muse and bun-busting rides in erratic conveyances were welcomed as the stuff of future after-dinner legends.

Every now and then on the road — or, in this case, on the river — the professional traveller meets someone who is a reminder of what the thrill of travel-for-its-own-sake is still about. When I first saw her, Sam was leaning over the rail of a boat that was ripping down the Mae Khong River from Jinghong in Yunnan to our destination, Chiang Saen in northern Thailand. She was wide-eyed and wordless with the pleasure of it all — the wind rush, the eddies of the restless river, the shoals and reefs that our boat was slaloming between. Glistening jungle banks rose beside us, Laos to port and Myanmar to starboard. Unlike me, she took no notes other than her private musings and captured her images of that glorious morning river with no lens but the eye.

Unusually for a Thai woman, she was backpacking alone. A Rastafarian rainbow beanie and deep suntan also set her apart from her traditionally sun-shy, fashionista Thai sisters. She had just spent weeks wandering in China, communicating mostly via pantomime and smiles. With delight, she told me how friendly villagers in rural Yunnan had flagged down a bus and piled on to instruct the driver in great detail as to where she was to be safely set down at her next destination. This river trip was the penultimate leg of her odyssey before she returned to the hospital south of Bangkok where she works as a senior nurse.

A month later, out of the blue I received an email from her. She’d been on the road again, during her New Year break, this time motorcycling to Pakse in Laos. Her description of the return journey through rural Thailand on a local bus may have been grammatically less than perfect but the sentiments were impeccable. Celebration. Excitation. The joy of journeying for its own sake. Sam wrote:

“I rided slowly in Pakse, sightseeing around. Such a lovely town, calm and charm. Then on the bus, every two seats needed to fit three passengers, and they all had three baggages plus one or two big sack of rice. ‘OK, cows in the field!’ I thought, ‘Would you like to come to Bangkok, too? There is place for you in the rack above my head.’ We had no traffic jam on the road but many passengers in the bus we all jam and joy so much. Nobody blame. They all very cool. This is my journey to see people and such good changes. I love Thailand, my country.”

Play it again, Sam. And again.